DY444

OT. This is one of my real pet hates. Modern day script writers using inappropriate modern day phrases in supposedly period pieces. Really grinds my gears. A combination of ignorance, laziness and bad research. Grrrrrrrrrrrr! 😡

Easy to be wise after the event though. You can only plan for what is reasonably foreseeable at any point in time. Unknowable future policy decisions or unexpected events can make a nonsense of any strategic planning. Covid being a good example of the latter. Then there's the value for money as perceived by those in charge of the purse strings. The cost of the unsuccessful bits of the Modernisation Plan and its aftermath have been well documented. Not BR's finest hour imo and no doubt noticed by the Government of the day. The original WCML electrification ended up being an unqualified success and the electrification infrastructure has largely stood the test of time. It did come very close to being curtailed part way through though and I've always thought starting it from the north and working south saved it. Had it gone the other way it might have never got to Liverpool or Manchester. However the consequent reviews caused the lengthy hiatus before the Glasgow extension and resulted in cost savings like headspans, which were subsequently squeezed to the limit on the ECML, resulting in ongoing reliability issues. A false economy in the long run but caused by the need to reduce capital costs at the time. After the disastrous largesse of the modernisation plan, BR eventually became pretty good at getting value for money on its infrastructure spend; however now we have NR which seems to have made minimising what is delivered for every pound spent into an art form. I don't agree with the DfT approach to the railways, indeed I have been one of its fiercest critics, but I do have some sympathy with the view that the industry can't be trusted to do anything at reasonable cost.

That's not the case. The WR had 100mph sections way before the introduction of HSTs. I have an idea the first sections appeared in the late 60s and more were added when the 50s started arriving.

Me neither. Many, many strange things have happened on the railway over the years, but back in BR days if someone had said Class 73s would have booked passenger work to Inverness, Aberdeen and Fort William in the 2020s you would have dismissed them as stark raving bonkers.

Crossed in the post - yes that's it - the little compartment behind the cab was weird

It's a long time ago now but for a couple of years right after they were built, my train home from London Bridge was booked 2 x 319/1. My vague recollection is that the 1st class was in two compartments behind the driving cab, one of 12 seats and one of 4. The smaller compartment was odd as it had 2 seats facing each way.

Indeed. The generators were built with that arrangement.

.. and after that for a while on the spur between Fawkham Jn and the first stage of HS1. Another tricky location iirc especially for London bound trains with a steep downhill gradient on HS1 before the speed restriction onto the spur, a relatively short changeover zone, and a good chance of a red at the signal protecting Fawkham Jn. I recall one Eurostar driver telling me the order of business was get it slowed down, get the pan down sharpish and worry about the rest afterwards.

It's done at Farringdon southbound but at City Thameslink northbound.

I can't claim to be that familiar with South Wales but there is a crew in the near cab and a shunter between the locomotive and first coach so I suggest there is a good chance the locomotive has just backed onto the stock. That suggests a terminus or a big station which I submit perhaps rules out Neath. Swansea High St is therefore my total stab in the dark.

There is of course a world of difference between protest on the one hand, and trespass, obstruction and criminal damage on the other. Too many "protests" have crossed that line in recent times including a number of those against HS2. In my view there can be no complaints when those going about their lawful business decide enough is enough.

AIUI 67s are not cleared to Central and Royal Train operations in recent years have used Riverside. That means either Waterloo or Victoria which don't have easy vehicle access to the platforms, or a convoluted journey from Paddington. If it went to Riverside then you have the trespass issue on third rail routes plus both branches and stations are going to be very busy. A road journey is easier to police and allows more people to see the procession safely from the roadside.

FWIW The Sunday Times had a paragraph in a larger piece about the state of the public finances which said the new PM was "likely" to cancel some of the "later" stages of HS2 in favour of (presumably cheaper) upgrades to the northern east-west corridors. Not entirely surprising if true given the current clamour for massive state intervention to try and offset the effects of increased energy costs.

Which is why I said: "The suitability will depend on the traction type, train formation, location of the dead section, the route topology in its vicinity, its length, and its proximity to other dead sections (either OHNS or "under bridge" dead sections)." The point being that a tapchanger locomotive at full chat has to run the tap changer all the way down and back up again for each dead section, which, from the maximum notch, takes about a minute. Types with more modern traction packages don't have to do this, the power can be reduced to zero, and critically, restored to full, far more quickly. Thus if the bridges with dead sections are too close together, or too close to an OHNS, in areas where high power is required like climbing gradients, then it will impede a tap changer locomotive like an 86 far more than say a 90. This is because the latter can get the power to tackle the gradient back on far more quickly after a dead section before having to take it off again for the subsequent dead section if the latter is relatively close by. So when deciding if a dead section is viable at a given location then the types of traction and trains will have to be considered as well as the disposition of adjacent dead sections/OHNS. On some route sections that disposition might be such that a class 86 hauled liner will require increased point to point times or in an extreme case there might be the risk of such a train coming to a stand in a dead section. That's what I'm getting at. All irrelevant if 86/6s don't come back but might be an issue if they do.

A very experienced engineer I worked with somewhere else joined the Crossrail project right at the very start. He left after 9 months because he could see it was set up to fail from the get go and nobody would listen to him when he tried to point out what needed to be changed. Projects rarely fail out of the blue. Plenty of people know they are going wrong (often from the start) and either say nothing or are ignored by higher ups. As an engineer myself I've always subscribed to the view that getting it right is far more important than doing it on time as people quickly forget it was late if it works but you never hear the last of getting it wrong.

I'm afraid that's a "how long is a piece of string" question. The suitability will depend on the traction type, train formation, location of the dead section, the route topology in its vicinity, its length, and its proximity to other dead sections (either OHNS or "under bridge" dead sections). Dead sections also present a bigger problem to tap changer locomotives. As of now these only exist in heritage fleets so that probably doesn't matter but Freightliner stated when the 86/6s were stood down that they might make a return if the traffic and economic situation warranted it. If that happens then it might be the case that they wouldn't be able to operate on some lines with "under bridge" dead sections.

May 1969, Beattock. Traction motor field divert problem on 417. One fatality.

Watched a Hustle re-run last night which featured shots of Euston, a Pendolino and a Chiltern 168 but the most curious part was Birmingham New St PSB being used for the exterior shots of the baddie's office.

"Interfacing to the existing traction equipment was theoretically straight forward" covers that. However all you need is an emu that had traction equipment which could intrinsically accept a DC supply. For example a 313 can and has camshaft control however it fails on the criteria of having space for the diesel alternator sets . At the time the 319s were ordered it was a bit of a surprise that they were to be fitted with GTO traction equipment as the prior expectation had been they would be camshaft controlled units like the 313s. If they had been delivered as camshaft controlled units they could still have become 769s. The "must be chopper" is really back to front. The actual situation is that it "must not be phase angle thyristor" like 314/315/317/318/320/321 (pre Renatus)/322.

I admit I don't follow the minutiae of the design, development and manufacturing process but it seems to me that "simple solution" is not what other manufacturers who don't have these difficulties do and is a potential recipe for longer lead times. Indeed Bachmann, for so long the world champions at announcing something then taking years and years to deliver it, have gone completely the other way with their new 37 and 47. So much so that these were virtually "we've developed this and you can buy it very soon" or in the case of the 37, "you can buy it now", clearly with no necessity to know how many orders they've got up front. It just seems to me that Hornby has some deep rooted systemic problem with its processes that other manufacturers don't have. They are at the end of the day essentially all doing the same thing, the only difference being Hornby seem to do it noticeably worse than the others.

The relief lines between Paddington and Airport Jn have (or at least did have) ATP too.

Yes my mistake - I meant the 60+ photocard. There's great resistance in London to any changes to that. The 60+ card in the back office system is treated like a travel card in that there are no charging implications for a failure to touch in and/or out. The current journey history is thus on a best endeavours basis using whatever touches happen to be made. To place a cap on the 60+ card would require changes to that both in terms of conditions of use making touches in and out compulsory, to handle penalty fares for failure to touch in or out, and to monitor, enforce and allow the user to see the status of the cap. There may also need to be provision for a user to add PAYG to the card to handle the situation where the cap has been exceeded. History suggests changes to the Oyster back office systems are never quick so I don't see any such scheme being introduced in a hurry even if TfL accept it (which I don't think they will without a big fight).

Adding an annual cap will take time and money because at present Freedom passes are treated by the back office system like Oyster travel cards. Travel cards have no requirement to touch in and out within the covered zones and thus no concept of a charging implication for incomplete journeys within those zones. The back office systems will have to be modified to change that for Freedom passes and convert them into some sort of pre-topped up PAYG equivalent. History suggests changes to the Oyster back office system don't happen in a hurry and any putative revenue gain will be offset initially by the cost of such a change. It's also likely "the minister" will have had an ear bashing from the London Tory group who oppose phasing it out because they fear (with some justification) an electoral backlash in the outer suburbs. My view has always been that the revenue generated by dumping it will be far lower than the Government thinks and the political cost far higher especially in the current economic climate. As such it seems a very strange thing to pick a big fight over. If it does get withdrawn then the least damaging way to do it is to let existing pass holders keep them and close the scheme to new applicants. However we'll see what happens.

I think the 50s are a text book example of how not to design a locomotive and a real world example of Roger Ford's Informed Sources law about any changes made from the prototype will be for the worse. Everyone talks about the electronics but there was far more to it than that - the oil throwing engine, the air filtration system, the flimsy main generator, the change away from a previously proven traction motor commutator design and so on. The oil throwing in particular made some of the other issues (eg the electronics) worse than they might otherwise have been. Wrt train heating it also suffered the same problem as earlier BR diesels built with eth in that it didn't anticipate the future demands that air con stock would impose. The eth generator was thus somewhat under nourished for air con rakes and there is an argument that the eth index for the class probably should have been lower than 61. Indeed in recognition of this there were special procedures laid down for managing the eth supply in the winter months when supplying a rake of stock with an eth index of over 48 if the stock had been standing with no supply for more than a specified period.

The eth on the sleeper 92s is set to 1500V.